A few years ago, I joined Chris Do at The Futur podcast, where I mentioned a story about Momofuku displaying chickens that they weren’t actually serving. I didn’t do a great job explaining the story.

After I heard Frank Chimero mention a similar idea six months ago, my brain remembered the idea and I wrote a post about it. I remember putting a draft together on my Notes app while I was waiting for some food. I filed it into my list of ideas and eventually wrote it up in full on Google Docs and published it.

Yesterday, I posted the idea in response to someone on X. I figured it might be interesting to Hacker News, so I posted it there too. It gained a lot of momentum on the leaderboard, leading to a lot of views and discussion on integrity, care, and quality. A thread of quotes particularly stood out to me.

This was all a lot more than I could have imagined when I wrote this blog post up. It feels like a breakthrough. 

I wrote this up just as a note to friends who ask me how I juggle writing and full-time work, this is a higher fidelity example. It’s really just a small piece at a time and finding openings throughout the day. I really love blogging because of the long half-life of these articles though. A social media post probably wouldn’t go viral six months after I posted it (unless it was a prediction about the future that came true or something exceptional like that).

P.S., While Swyx has a three strikes rule for blogging, I could add a variation to three strikes for promotion. If one of your ideas has come up organically in a discussion three times, it’s worth discussing further as well.